What are the drawbacks to building a pickup truck camper shell, rather than a slide-in, as a cabover ? I've found many plans for slide's and so on, but never anything like a simple shell that would include a cabover compartment. I'm wondering whether there's an inherent problem that prevents this.

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Joined: 8-May 17
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Favorite Truck Camper(s): Lance
Type and Brand of Truck(s) Owned: '66 Chevy K10
Type of Tiedowns used: Don't know
Truck and Camper Setup: 8' cabover with helper strings on the rear of the truck. In the process of rebuilding an old camper with rotten floors and a leaking roof. Will add a toilet and shower and replace the icebox with a refrigerator.

QUOTE(ToniFranklin @ May 30 2018, 07:47 AM)

Hi,

What are the drawbacks to building a pickup truck camper shell, rather than a slide-in, as a cabover ? I've found many plans for slide's and so on, but never anything like a simple shell that would include a cabover compartment. I'm wondering whether there's an inherent problem that prevents this.

Camper manufacturers would make cabover shells if they could make money off them. With the additional structure required of a cabover, a shell with a cabover would be twice the cost.

If you build it yourself, there's no problem. It's significantly more structurally difficult to build the cabover. I rebuilt a smallish cabover camper reusing only the aluminum siding, windows and accessories.

Steel reinforceing 1x1" angle welded into an L was used to support the 3/4" plywood cabover bottom from the front of the camper behind the cab. Additionally, there is a 1x6 that runs the full length of each side of the camper (12 feet long) supporting the cantilever. With these four additional structural members, the cabover is solid as a rock.